Is it possible to know the future? In general, the answer is a resounding “No!” But in certain instances, tools are emerging to predict what might happen in the near future with high probability. This kind of knowledge — say, that civil unrest and violence is likely to erupt in a specific country within the…

Wouldn’t it be wonderful? If we could envision a desirable future and make it happen. Is that possible? … Well, sort of. I encourage the news/media industries and journalism educators to give it a try. This is the second of my series to demonstrate the many tools and methods of strategic foresight (a.k.a., futures studies),…

“What is the best way to measure meaningful content?” … That’s the prompt for June’s Carnival of Journalism, a monthly blog-fest where journalism experts and aficionados answer a common question, and the result is a brain dump usually representing lots of diversity and wisdom. Carnival proprietor David Cohn has a rule for participants: “No apologies.”…

Stop the presses! (For 6 days a week!) … Yes, I’m being serious. The recent New York Times “Innovation” report, a meant-to-be-internal strategy document proposing a (long-overdue) digital-first future for what is arguably the best newspaper and digital news operation on the planet, painted a depressing picture. Despite beefing up its digital business and creating…

You’ve likely seen the “leaked” New York Times innovation-strategy report produced by an 8-member team of NYT employees, presumably for management and internal consumption. (The unabridged version appeared on the web, initially via Buzzfeed, just as executive editor Jill Abramson was getting fired last week — perhaps not coincidentally. The report is dated March 24,…

The University of Colorado’s School of Journalism & Mass Communication ceased to exist (it was “discontinued”) on June 30, 2011. Journalism education at CU lives on, for now as a “program” housed in the CU Graduate School. At some point, CU will have a Journalism “department” inside a still-being-planned new College of Media, Communication, &…

This post is part of the latest Carnival of Journalism group-blogging thought exercise. The question (posed this month by Donica Mensing, associate professor of journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno): “How do you spark innovation in your own thinking, your newsroom or classroom? What techniques do you recommend?” Well, I’m game to tackle that…

Privacy or transparency? Can’t we have both? … This past week brought the public debut of Secret, a new iPhone app (Android coming later) that I predict will be a hit, because it comes at a time when it’s increasingly difficult to keep secrets or have any semblance of digital privacy. And while initially it…

Futurists deal with scenarios. With a single future for any industry or important issue impossible to predict accurately, the best way to forecast what is years or decades ahead is by working with multiple (plausible) scenarios, and going from there — say, to developing solutions to societal problems that accompany respective scenarios (of climate change,…

FIRST OF A SERIES The traditional onslaught of 2014 predictions by media and technology writers and pundits is (almost?) over. You’ve probably read many or some of them, and it’s typical for the authors to make predictions about the year ahead. (E.g., Nick Bilton of the New York Times predicts that smartwatches are going to…

Where have all the full-time news futurists gone? … Oh, yeah, there have been so few in the news industry, it’s no wonder that most news companies have trouble grappling with the future. The New York Times hired author and futurist Michael Rogers as “futurist in residence” from 2006 to 2008. Rogers previously worked at…

It’s now been many years that I’ve been writing and opining about “paywalls” for news websites. It’s not a subject that’s going away, although living in the Boulder-Denver, Colorado, media market, I haven’t had to deal with paywalls myself. Until now. Both the Daily Camera (my local newspaper/news website in Boulder) and the nearby and…

While I’m usually on top of news-industry news, I confess to not spotting this until today (thanks to Journalism That Matters‘ latest newsletter): an indicator of the plummeting quality of some (maybe many) newspapers after years of cost-cutting. Can it get much worse than this?… On November 6, 2013, the day after Election Day, the…

It’s back! The Carnival of Journalism. Hip, hip, hooray! Huh?! The Carnival is a monthly online gabfest of (mostly) journalists who all agree to answer a common question, usually related to the future of journalism, on their respective blogs. It’s being resurrected by David Cohn, a.k.a. DigiDave, after a break. (There were other breaks before…

If you want to have an idea of what the future (or various futures) might look like, I hope you’re a fan of science fiction. The best sci-fi novelists, including author/futurist/scientist David Brin, are adept at extrapolating possible futures based on emerging technologies, scientific discoveries, and societal trends that are just beginning to exhibit themselves…